Peanut Butter and Cigarettes

I think I may have just accidentally changed my life. I can tell this change is for the better, but I can’t quite recall when or how it happened. Normally I make these really grandiose and quite narcissistic announcements that I am going to change my life and rarely does this ever turn out well. In fact, it usually results in me feeling a bit stupid and wishing I had just kept my mouth shut.

But this time, I didn’t really mean to make such a great improvement to the quality of my life and I’m not even sure that I can take credit for it. And when I say that my life has changed you might be confused because my house is still a mess, I’m still unemployed, my bank account is still the same and so is the number on the scale. And at first it might look like something so little, something so insignificant that it wouldn’t be worth even writing about, much less building up to like I have in these first few paragraphs. But here goes.

I’ve been hearing a lot about gratitude lately from really spiritual people and places like Oprah and church. The problem is that the things I’m most grateful for are like things like peanut butter and cigarettes, not exactly stuff that spiritual gurus espouse as the way to happiness. Still, everyone that I respect and admire says that having gratitude is essential to bringing about abundance in one’s life, the idea being that when we practice feeling gratitude we will attract more things to feel gratitude about. However another problem I have with this whole gratitude thing is that I’ve noticed that the people who are saying this have a lot to be grateful for, like Oprah who has a zillion dollars in her spare change drawer. I, on the other hand, am often scraping the bottom of my purse looking for quarters to do with laundry with. So I began to wonder: is gratitude an emotion that only the wealthy can experience, or is in experiencing gratitude that we create wealth? Which comes first… the gratitude or the nest egg?

Shortly after my son was born, I went a little nutsy. Officially this little time in my life is called post pardum depression, but I believe that my son’s arrival was like the proverbial last straw on the camel’s back. See, prior to his arrival I had managed to just barely be able to meet my own standards of what I thought was acceptable behavior. I could get the house clean before people would come over, I could make myself presentable when I went outside. I had time to return phone calls and money to pay the bills and energy to exercise. I could wash my car and make sure all of the take-out cartons were thrown away before anyone else had to sit in the back seat. I believed that being able to do these things was very important to how lovable and acceptable I was to everyone around me, including God. It was an anxious, scurrying dog-paddle fight to keep it all up, but I managed to do so.

However, when Jack was born I couldn’t keep it up anymore. I was barely able to keep him alive, much less keep my car clean. Suddenly the answering machine showed that I had 27 unheard messages and my email inbox was full. Dishes were piled up around my sink and my plants were dying from neglect. Piles of mail teetered ominously on any and all of the flat surfaces in my home. Weird, sticky, black grime had formed in spots on my entryway floor, and my Christmas tree was still in the lawn, even though it was February. Above all of this, I hadn’t plucked by eyebrows in several months and I was beginning to resemble a member of the Adam’s Family.

All of this was enough to make me a nervous wreck. My therapist told me that I needed to just make it okay that things weren’t perfect, that nobody expected my life or my house to be clutter-free. I tried to let things go, like the dishes in the sink, but then I found a cockroach in the kitchen which set me into a state of panic likened only to the catastrophic stockmarket crash in 1929.

I would wake up each morning in this state of utter panic at how messy my life was and how it had all gotten away from me, totally overwhelmed by the piles of mail and the sticky floors. I would rush to my desk and furiously write out a to-do list, often multiple pages long. It felt so good to write that list out, like how I imagine it must feel for a drug addict when the needle hits the vein. It was an almost instant relief from the anxiety, a delicious high. To see that numbered list, so neatly written, gave me a sense of control over what felt like such chaos and despair.

All I could think about throughout the day was getting that list completed. Having a completed list was like being flawless; there were no errors to point out. Somebody could walk into my life and I could feel safe. I could say, “Yes, you can come in! I have no flaws! I’ve got it all covered! My files are in order, my checking account is balanced, the diaper pail is empty, baby photos have been sent to all relatives, the plants are all watered on a schedule! I am a good employee! I am a good friend! I am a good mother! I am a good daughter! I am a good person! See!?”

The problem is that the list never, ever got done. Damn it, it never got done. I would check off number 14 on the list – Get the mail – but then the contents of the mail would add 5 more items onto the end of the list – call health insurance, research conference dates, call mom about babysitting, call H.R. about W-2’s, pay bills. It was so depressing to see the list growing instead of shrinking each day.

The worst part about this time is that I was so wrapped up in this totally neurotic pattern that I missed out on the first few months with my son. He became a nuisance to getting the list done that I would get so frustrated with him when he would require my attention (which was all of the time- he was a newborn!). I would nurse him or rock him to sleep or play with him in this sort of annoyed, distracted way, as if he was just another task to complete in the day. I remember wishing that he would just sleep all day so that I could have some uninterrupted, productive time.

The to-do list had become a problem. I would get up, make the list, and experience the exquisite relief of writing it all down, and then dread looking at it. I would ignore it all day, detest it even. Looking at all of those undone things, all of those reasons for self loathing, all of those imperfections and flaws, all of the “things that are in the way of you being worthy” would take away my buzz. And so I both loved and hated my to do-lists like an alcoholic loves to drink, giving me both relief and reason for self rejection in a single swallow.

God, those were dark days. They were anxiety- driven, heart-racing, brow- beating days where I couldn’t get away from the evidence of my imperfection. It showed up everywhere I looked until… well, I don’t know. I just…shifted. I mean, the evidence is still there, but I shifted.

I can say that at some point I realized that my entire day, yes even my entire life, had become about checking items off a list and that this was not how I was interested in living my life. I wanted to live a life engaged, a life with fullness and richness, a life with gratitude and appreciation. I wanted to feel human again, lithe and alert. And maybe it was just in the defining of what I wanted I created it.

And so I dropped writing to-do lists totally cold turkey. In its place I am now implementing a to-be list. Each morning I decide to be present, to be grateful, to be mindful. I wake up and set an intention to be compassionate with myself and my son as I move about the day, to be willing to trust that God is with me and that I am worthy of love- both God’s love and my own. And it really is a decision. I have to choose to be this way with myself because it’s not hard for me to write out entire lists indicating that I should have been left behind by God a dozen years ago. To be loving with myself is the most amazing task I can do because it requires that I embrace all parts of myself, even the lumpy, messy, awkward parts.

When I fall of the wagon and use the overflowing trash can as evidence of my unworthiness, gratitude helps me see that the trash is actually evidence of God’s favor in my life, that my cup runneth over, so much so that I have things to throw things away. Gratitude is by far the most effective cure to my overindulgent self-loathing. Similarly, when I see messy floors and piles of mail and dirty windows I tell myself that I it is a privilege to have floors and mail and windows to attend to. It is a privilege to live such an extravagant, abundant life where floors and mail and windows exist at all.

If I choose to make it so, something as simple as doing the dishes can be an exercise in appreciation. I don’t have to do the dishes, I get to do the dishes. I get the privilege of going over to the sink (my God, I have a sink!), turning on the hot water (hot water! I have clean, hot water at my command! And I don’t even have to pay for it!), putting on rubber gloves (can you believe that a person can buy gloves for only 99 cents?!) scraping the food (thank you, God, for such abundance!) off of my dishes (a gorgeous set) and placing them into my dishwasher (a dishwasher! Can you believe my fortune! I have a dishwasher!) And then there’s the dishsoap. Have you ever really looked at dishsoap? It’s like liquid jewelry, shimmering and luxurious. Iridescent streams of emeralds and opals pour elegantly from the bottle while bright bursts of citrus or pine fragrance meet your nose. All of these things are exquisite gifts to be cherished and held in the deepest places in our hearts.

When I move through life in this state of consciousness I can’t help but notice the ravishing beauty and ridiculous abundance of my life. It is awe inspiring, humbling and profound. My God, I get to change a diaper. I get to nurse life into a child, I get to feel his soft baby skin against my own. My God, I get to pay this phone bill. I get to receive love through this small mechanical device, my friend’s voice nourishing me like milk and honey. My God, I get to sweep my porch. How did I ever get such a lovely porch where the sun comes through the slats in the awning above in the most extravagant of ways, warming my toes as I walk upon it?

I hope that my son will see me living my life this way and it will rub off on him at least a little bit. I do suspect that we will scuffle some day as I tell him that, no- he doesn’t have to clean his room but he gets to clean his room, a clever way of shoving my philosophy down his future teenage throat. I’m sure that this will be followed with a roll of his eyes and a slam of a his door, which I then get to be on the other side of.